When I awoke last week to the news that Donald Trump had been elected president once again, my first impulse was to write. This is not unusual for me. I have been writing my way through difficult times for more than 60 years.It’s what I did after the civil rights battles of the 1960s, the Vietnam War and the Sept. 11 attacks and at the start of the pandemic. At moments of crisis and historical upheaval, it’s easy to doubt that good writing can possibly help fix the many ills of the world. But whenever I have found myself lost in anger or anguish or confusion, the answer for how I could get through it was the same: Put pen to paper.In my experience, good writing requires four things: precision of language, the freedom to say anything, respect and — perhaps most important — love. The responsibilities of the writer today are no different from those of any writer in any age. But the presence, character and now considerable power of President-elect Trump make the work of fulfilling those responsibilities all the more difficult and urgent.

Precision, freedom, respect and love: These qualities are sorely missing in Mr. Trump and his vision for our country. His “Make America Great Again” slogan, for instance, is deliberately imprecise. What does “great” mean, anyway? Richer? More powerful? How about more compassionate? I doubt it.

Freedom? He has indicated outright contempt for the democratic system and proposed rolling back freedoms of all kinds, from a woman’s freedom to make decisions about her body to an immigrant’s freedom to pursue the American dream. Respect? His racial insults speak for themselves. Love? Yeah, right. The only love he shows is for himself.

With a character like Mr. Trump in charge of our country, it is all the more important that we, as citizens, demonstrate these qualities ourselves — and that we, as writers, exhibit them in our work.

But how to do it?

Start with precision: As Mark Twain put it, the difference between the almost right word and the right word is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning. The simple reason precision is essential in writing is that it allows both writer and reader a clear shared understanding. Often, this comes down to finding the correct noun. Emerson called nouns the “speaking language of things.” A good rule of thumb is that if you need three adjectives to describe something, you have the wrong something.

One must be precise in all facets of writing. One should choose anticipation over surprise. Surprise can be exciting, but it’s a cheap thrill. Many of the best works of literature get along just fine without it. From the first lines of “Hamlet,” we know that the prince is going to bite the dust. Yet we watch the play again and again to see how his life leads to its inevitable end.

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